Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Maybe it had a cardboard box on it...

Scooter blown up in security scare Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:53 AM GMT LONDON (Reuters) - Heidi Brown was told she could park her new scooter outside the vehicle registration office while she waited to get number plates. To her horror, it was blown up by the army after someone reported that it might be a bomb. Police in Ipswich confirmed on Thursday that a moped had been blown up in a controlled explosion after local business people "raised concerns" that it could be a bomb. "The moped was chained to the perimeter fence outside the building. We weren't able to identify whose vehicle it was because there were no number plates on it," said a spokeswoman for Suffolk police. She said the surrounding office buildings were evacuated and three roads were closed off. The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported the scooter belonged to Brown, a 22-year-old care worker, who said she had been told she could leave it there awaiting inspection.

What this news report doesn't state is that she left it there on a friday night, so it sat there for THREE DAYS. It wasn't until the employess of this Government building came in on Monday morning that they noticed this "suspicous moped" without license plates parked in front of the place where you ummm.. get license plates.

Like I said before... the terrorists have won. Now we're blowing up mopeds because "someone reported that it might be a bomb" and "local business people raised concerns". What's the lesson here? Don't chain up your unlicensed moped? Better safe than sorry? People are idiots?

In other news (days later), the Terry Schiavo case rages on. I've largely ignored this issue, because I didn't know (or really wanted to know) the particulars of the case... When I read this, I was appropriately irritated:

Talk about a new lowCongress and President Bush ignored the Constitution when they whipped up a law that would take a legal dispute out of Florida courts and put it into a federal court, where some people hope it might be settled differently.

That seems doubtful; the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to accept the Terri Schiavo case, which suggests it believes Florida's courts have handled it properly.

Judges have affirmed repeatedly that Michael Schiavo has the right to have the feeding tube removed from his wife, who has been severely brain-damaged for 15 years. He says she told him she would not want to be kept alive under such conditions.

But because she did not put those wishes on paper, her distraught parents are trying to keep her alive. The courts have repeatedly ruled for the husband, not the parents.

Needless to say, a decision to turn off the technology that keeps bodies, if not minds, functioning is difficult and wrenching. Yet Americans make those decisions every day on behalf of loved ones, and the legal procedures to guide them are well established.

Congress and the president know that. They also know that some of the religious and political organizations that helped elect them are demanding that Florida's laws and precedents be ignored. As a memo circulating among Senate Republicans noted, this is a great political issue.

But great politics is different from great government, which is what the Founders tried to give us when they divided power among three branches. They wanted to protect us from unrestrained power. Congress and the president are trying to violate that crucial principle that shields our freedom.

So is U.S. Rep. Walter Jones Jr., who's trying to intimidate the Marine Corps into dropping the prosecution of one of its own for emptying two M-16 magazines into two unarmed Iraqi men and putting a triumphant sign over their bodies.

Whether the lieutenant is guilty as charged remains to be seen. But if the Marines believe he should be tried, the Marines' legal system should be allowed to operate without meddling by politicians looking for votes.

Or maybe we should abolish all the courts. Kill all the lawyers. Throw out the laws, precedents and intricate rules worked out over centuries. Forget the rights and opinions of minorities.

Let Congress and the president decide everything from family disputes to criminal prosecutions, based on polls and how many votes it might get them.